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The Media & Technology Digest provides a monthly analysis of the key trends and innovations shaping the global technology landscape. Written by our senior analysts the digest includes a detailed focus on key industry hot topics, analysis of all major industry and product announcements with in-depth examinations of significant industry trends.

Verizon recently announced the rollout of its 5G wireless home broadband service in the US, 5G Home, with orders opening September 13th, 2018 and launch beginning October 1st in Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, and Sacramento.
The company is touting typical speeds of approximately 300 Mbps, peaking at 1 Gigabit, with no data caps. The service is priced at $50/month for existing Verizon subscribers, and $70/month for non-subscribers, and comes with three months of YouTube TV free. Subscribers also receive their choice of a free Google Chromecast Ultra or Apple TV 4K.

Amazon announced its newest member of the Echo smart speaker line on June 7, the Fire TV Cube. Combining Echo smart speaker functionality, a new 8-mic far-field voice recognition array and the features of the company's Fire TV streaming video devices, the $119 Fire TV Cube will be available June 21.

On June 6th, Sonos launched its new $399 Beam soundbar, a combination Sonos connected speaker, assistant-agnostic smart speaker, and home theater soundbar. Though the device is a logical progression from the company's existing line of connected speakers, high end TV-centric solutions (Playbar and Playbase), and Sonos One agnostic smart speaker, it represents a significant point in the market's progression towards voice-driven interfaces as the interconnect across home media consumption.

The standalone powered speaker has gone through several evolutions, and up until recently, Wi-Fi multi-room speakers were the most advanced example of the product category for consumers. As the smart home market continues to evolve and coalesce around standards and ecosystems, and as ecosystem owners compete for a foothold in the connected home, the Smart Speaker was born.

The 2018 CES tradeshow was dominated by common themes revolving around AI, such as machine learning, voice interfaces, and digital assistants. Building upon the AI-first focus of CES, Apple’s HomePod launch, and Google’s increased aggression in language support for Google Assistant just announced at Mobile World Congress 2018, competition within the market for smart speakers and related digital assistants has now truly begun escalating sharply.
IHS Markit expects annual shipments of smart speakers to grow steadily from 32 million units in 2017 to 47 million in 2018, reaching 85 million in 2021. This is only a fraction of the more than 5 billion consumer devices supporting digital assistants in use by the end of 2018, with nearly 3 billion more added by the end of 2021.

This brief presentation highlights the emerging market trends within the home appliance industry, looking across appliance types, electronic components and connectivity and other technology segments as witnessed during CES 2018 held in Las Vegas, US during January 9 – 12 2018.

Happy and Prosperous New Year 2018!
As we set into the New Year, and on the onset of CES 2018 where companies showcase their capabilities and plans for coming year, its time to set our eyes on the things we might or even want to expect in the year 2018.
There are a few trends that we can expect to see across a wide range of technology segments emerging in 2018, however these will also create challenges and questions for the industry in the year ahead.

The number of devices having at least one USB-C port is forecast to increase at a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 70 percent, growing from 300 million devices in 2016 to just under five billion devices in 2021.

Amazon recently announced a number of Alexa-related developments and products, only a few short weeks after the IFA 2017 tradeshow and a week prior to Google’s October 4th product announcement event. Most notably, a variety of new Echo products were announced.

Google’s Pixel 2 smartphone launch event brought the announcement of two new smart speakers.
The first, is the $49 Google Home Mini, featuring a small, rounded, design-neutral form factor, and three color choices. The device incorporates far-field voice recognition, and inherits the same slate of Google Assistant, Chromecast Built-in, and calling capabilities as its larger Google Home stablemate.

This report highlights the emerging market trends within the home appliance industry, looking across appliance types, electronic components and connectivity and other technology segments as witnessed during IFA 2017 ... .

Alongside its new Echo product line, Amazon recently announced the latest revision to its Fire TV streaming video device. The new $69 Fire TV replaces the former product in the company’s two-product spread encompassing Fire TV at the high end and Fire TV Stick at the low end.
The new Fire TV model is smaller and lighter than the previous version, and is now in a dongle form factor. The product is powered over Micro-USB and incorporates 2GB of RAM, 8GB of storage, dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi connectivity, and an Amlogic S905Z SoC with four 1.5 Ghz ARM Cortex A53 cores and Mali 450 MP3 GPU. It will ship with Fire OS 6, based on Android 7.1 Nougat.
In terms of new capabilities, the new Fire TV supports 4K, 60 fps video with HDR (HDR10 but not Dolby Vision), and Dolby Atmos audio output. As with the previous model, a mic-equipped Bluetooth voice remote for search and Alexa input is also included.
The new Fire TV is available October 25th for $69, or bundled with Echo Dot for $79.

At its annual September iPhone launch event, Apple recently unveiled the latest update to its Apple TV product line, the Apple TV 4K.
The new model incorporates 3GB of RAM and the iPad Pro’s A10X processor, and is capable of streaming video playback of up to 4K resolution at 60 frames per second (fps). The new device incorporates double the CPU and quadruple the graphics performance of the preceding model. Along with an update in resolution and power, the new 5th generation Apple TV supports high dynamic range content (HDR) via HDR10 and Dolby Vision support. 4K and HDR content will be available via iTunes, with 4K support for Netflix and Amazon planned for a later date.
The product will be priced at $179 and $199 for 32GB and 64GB versions, respectively, and available at retail on September 22nd, 2017. The prior 4th gen Apple TV will remain for sale at the existing price of $149 for the 32GB version.

Roku recently filed for a $100M initial public offering on September 1st, backed by 21st Century Fox, Fidelity, and Menlo Ventures as major shareholders. The company’s stock will list on the NASDAQ exchange under the symbol ROKU.